Sloth
by Thanfiction
Summary: Sometimes there is nothing better to do


There was not much on television at 3am in rural Arkansas, but there was something soothing about the vigorous monotony of the infomercials, and Castiel let the digital signal play against his mind's eye, even after he turned away from the set and draped Sam's jacket over the screen to block the flickering light from disturbing anyone. It was an anti-aging cream at the moment, doubtless crafted of 100% pure premium placebo with a little bit of petroleum jelly, but the notion of it was charmingly naive. He remembered once, when he had been living unawares as Emmanuel, a man had come to suggest that if he had used his abilities for cosmetic purposes, they could both be very wealthy. The idea that it was impossible because aging - being nothing wrong - could not be healed, had baffled the would-be entrepreneur utterly, and even now, the memory of the look on his face brought a thin quirk of a smile to Castiel's lips.

The Winchesters were sleeping, and not only did he not need to, he didn't even want to. Unlike most angels, Castiel had actually experienced sleep, but he found it a strange, somewhat frightening thing, a loss of control over body and plunging absence of mind and spirit that was far too much like dying. He'd done that, too. Also more than once.

Still, if one had done it nearly every day since birth, it was obviously a very different matter, and for all it was disconcerting in himself, it was very nice to watch humans sleep. Sam was clutching the pillow like a small child with a stuffed animal, and though he had maneuvered himself diagonally on the bed to eke every possible inch of space, his ankles still overhung the edge of the mattress, tangled in the sheets that he had mostly kicked off. He became overheated easily at night, but they refused to run the air conditioner, too long trained to be unsettled by the cover its steady hum would give to anyone trying to sneak up on them in their vulnerability.

For all that he took up the entire bed and then some, for all that the thin tshirt stretched across his shoulders revealed the lines of muscle as thick and toned as any athlete, it took only the briefest glance at their faces, even in sleep, to see that Sam was the younger brother. His lips were slightly, easily parted, his brow smooth, his face soft in ways that Dean's had never been since Castiel had met them. At a level deep enough to hold in dreaming, Sam trusted that he was safe.

It was the peace of one who had known unconditional love, the gift Dean had bought him at the price of his own childhood and any hope of having the same. It was a peace that meant Sam could come back after a hunt and let the job wash down the shower drain with the blood and blowback while his brother broke the seal on a new bottle of cheap booze that had eventually given him permission to pass out for a few hours.

Already, he was beginning to stir, and Castiel took the coat off the television, knowing that it would unnerve Dean if he knew he'd been watched. He could feel the increasing brain activity, the rising metabolism, nerves sparking back online. He was still lightly intoxicated and very tired, and he moaned, joints popping their protest at three decades of abuse as he hauled himself upright, bedsprings joining his protest. "Cas?"

"You're dehydrated, Dean." He kept his voice low as he stood, offering a bottle of water he knew Sam would more than forgive him for appropriating. "Drink this, then go back to sleep."

It was a rough grunt rather than any kind of language, but the intent was clear as Dean made a face and shoved it away, grabbing Castiel's shoulder instead and hauling himself to his feet to shuffle off toward the bathroom. He left the door open, but Castiel knew that was only because he was not entirely conscious, and Dean had been very clear as to the expectations of privacy in that room, so he carefully turned away, shutting off the television and waiting patiently until he finished and emerged again.

He was clearly more awake now, and Castiel noted that he had washed his face and rinsed his mouth. "You should go back to bed."

"Oh, I'm gonna," the easy acquiescence surprised him; he almost always argued Sam, even if he was barely keeping his eyes open. "Just got to check a few things."

"There are salt lines at the door and windows, sigils and hex bags placed appropriately, borax solution and holy water in the water guns there, and Sam has cleaned and reloaded the firearms. They're in the duffel between the beds with the machete and the bowie knife. The demon knife is in the bedside table." Castiel paused briefly in the recitation, smiling ever so slightly as he manifested the bright, three-sided blade of his own weapon into his hand. "Also, me."

It was delightful to watch the progression of reactions, even moreso that they eventually settled on a very real, if tired smile. "Ok then." Dean shook his head, chuckling as he grabbed the hem of his tshirt and pulled it off, taking the flannel outer shirt with it in a single wad of cloth that he tossed aside. There was a thickly scabbed slice along his ribs, and he itched at it absently with one hand as he pulled off his belt with the other.

Castiel frowned, surprised at how much it upset him that he hadn't known about the injury. "Why didn't you let me heal that?"

Dean blinked, clearly genuinely confused for a moment before he realized what Castiel was talking about. "No big deal." He shrugged, unbuttoning his jeans and kicking them aside...but also revealing a deep, purple-black bruise on the side of his thigh shaped so perfectly like a boot print that the tread was visible in places. "You've got better things to do."

"Dean, I -"

"Seriously, Cas." He straightened, brandishing a sock like an admonishing finger. "I appreciate the mojo when I need it, but this is band-aid crap. You don't need to play watchdog, either. Go...do other stuff."

He told himself it was because Sam would be grateful, but it was really so he didn't have to look at Dean's injuries and wonder what else he had been hiding that he gathered up the discarded clothing and folded it neatly next to Sam's on the top of the dresser. "It's all right. I don't have any other stuff to do."

Dean snorted dismissively. "Bullshit. How old are you?"

The question took him by surprise. "I don't -"

"How old are you, really?" Dean pressed. "Like, are we talking hundreds of thousands, millions, dinosaurs, what?"

Castiel shrugged, unsure how to explain that he had existed long before any formal accounting of time that would have meaning to a modern American human. "I don't know precisely."

"Ballpark it for me."

"I vaguely remember the first arthropods —"

"Oh, only vaguely?"

"I was very, very young then, Dean. One of my very first memories other than my Father's face is Gabriel showing me how things had started to make exoskeletons." He was getting annoyed, even if he didn't want to think about why. "They were very primitive, though. Entirely biological, no tires."

"You know what? Nevermind." Dean grimaced, pulling back the covers of his bed and climbing in. "I don't need to get sassed by an angel from Jurassic Park."

"Phanerozoic."

"Shut up." He rolled over, burrowing down into the pillows. "My point is, you've kept yourself busy without my fascinating self a while now. Go...do it again."

"Dean -"

"Get the hint, Cas. The Team Edward watching me sleep thing creeps me out. Let a man dream about strippers in peace."

He got the hint.

It was true, of course. There had been hundreds of millions of nights that hadn't involved standing guard over a motel room, but what Dean didn't understand was how completely Castiel had destroyed that life.

He could have spent the night with Uriel, stalking and smiting demons who would prey on the righteous, lighting the darkness with virtuous fury. They could have fought until daybreak, matching each other in the same effortless warrior's dance he found with Dean, then gone deep into some undiscovered crevasse of the sea or crystalline cave where Uriel would have brilliantly caricatured their defeated foes into some ghastly new fish or impossible rock formation. He could have finally heard the rest of the joke about the Emonite and the harem-keeper and laughed until he shimmered microwaves hard enough to create a new hot spring. Except Uriel was gone.

He could have spent the night with Rachel, wandering time with the whims of conversations that could accidentally last for millenium until neither of them was able to remember how they went from watching Michaelangelo carve the exquisite pain of the Virgin's face on the Pieta to helping Hadrosaurs hatch to lying on the hillside among David's sheep listening to the delicate play of roughly calloused fingers on the harpstrings. They could have talked about anything and everything and nothing. Except Rachel was gone.

He could have spent the night with Virgil, sparring and honing his skills with the weapons of Heaven, pressing strength and talent and speed to points no mortal mind or body could comprehend, much less enact. Comets would spark from the clash of their blades, but the harsh breaths had been matched by the trust of knowing that the point might stop an eyelash from a bared throat, but it would always stop. Except Virgil was gone.

He could have spent the night with Balthazar, basking in the swirling energies of galaxies still forming and the tumult of those crashing to their end, being one with impossible colors and daring each other to play games of fortitude and nerve at the event horizon of a black hole. They could have explained distillation to an ancient Irish farmer with a bit too much grain on his hands and come back three hundred years later on the day his descendants perfected the art, then taken it to sip while watching the sun rise through the rings of Saturn. Except Balthazar was gone.

He could have spent the night with Inias, comparing the poetry of the Neanderthals to the gaseous thought-spirals of the xenon beings of Rigel or debating the merits of the various human similes of God found among the philosophers of Alexandria. They could have parsed all the wisdom of creation and found it mirrored again in the shape and prism of a single droplet of water dewed upon a leaf at dawn at a desert's edge. Except Inias was gone.

He could have spent the night with Hester, carving praises to God in stone glory with raindrops as their chisels and scalpels, raising wonders of nature, coaxing delicate flowers from fields of ice and swirling sand into tessellations of worship. They could have made lakes so clear that a hundred feet would be as an inch and mountains so high that the peaks looked down upon the clouds. They could have wrought such things that would make the most hardened and cynical of men fall to their knees with tears in their eyes and say oh, such a world, such a miracle, such a God! Except Hester was gone.

He could have spent the night with Anna, soothing the broken heart of an emperor and turning his grief over the loss of a young and beautiful woman into the inspiration for the Taj Mahal. They could have followed the paths laid by Cupid and he could have watched in awe of her subtle skill as she wrought those crude and vivid passions into loves that would defy time. They could have watched a first kiss and then 80 years later soothed a couple into the arms of the Father together in perfect peace. Except Anna was gone.

He could have spent the night with Daphne, cooking supper together, watching a movie, kissing and caressing in front of the fire with a glass of wine and making love there on the couch because it all felt too good and too easy to bother with upstairs. They could have dozed in each others arms and he could have felt her breathing deepen and slow with perfect trust in his arms and believed that this was the meaning of happiness. Except the Winchesters had so necessarily lied to her and told her that he had a wife in another state, that he had abandoned her and their marriage was invalid, and she, too, was gone.

He could have spent the night with Dean, the mortal, the human, the sinner and righteous man, the vessel made for another that had somehow become his and yet not. The highschool dropout who had taught him more about freedom than all the writings of Payne and Locke and Hume, the graceless mechanic who fought with a skill and passion the Mongols would have embraced, the careless ladies' man who sometimes looked at him as Alexander had looked on Hephaestion and made the terrible brevity of his life a thing unspeakable. Except Dean had his lines, the boundaries of his life and soul warded against all comers, and if Castiel had ever been on the verge of exception to that, he had destroyed it long ago in ways that could probably never be truly repaired or forgiven.

He could have spent the night alone, except that was the most unbearable of all. Angels were not created to be alone. Ever.

So he chose instead to curl up on the back seat of the Impala, pulling his coat around him like a blanket and propping his head on the bag of laundry Sam had tied up for the laundromat tomorrow. His vessel's physical processes were utterly under his control, and he could choose to let them happen or not, just as he could choose to eat but didn't need to, and now, he would sleep. Because Dean was wrong, he didn't have better things to do, and sleep was a little like dying.


End file.
